Politics meets fantasy football

SAN FRANCISCO — Politicians and pundits have another thing to worry about beyond reelection: How they are doing in an online fantasy politics game.

Fantasy Politics, a new game of political influence and power that borrows from fantasy football, launched this week at a tech conference in San Francisco.

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It will allow armchair political obsessives to test their political know-how and put a cyber spin on former New York City Mayor Ed Koch’s famous phrase, “How am I doing?”

The game involves creating teams from more than 350 politicians, elected officials and pundits.

Each team drafts 10 political figures, including incumbent nationally elected officials and what the game calls “sideline politicians” (people who are running for office or recently held national office). Pundits — political consultants, reporters and professors — are also in the mix. Users can submit names, too.

As in fantasy sports, teams can trade and drop candidates or sign free agents (cue Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman). Teams gain points depending on 30 different measurable metrics, such as the number of social media followers, polling numbers and fundraising amounts.

The data that the game organizers aggregate is turned into a “Power Score,” between 0 and 99, which is a measure of political momentum, said Aaron Michel, the site's founder, who worked on John Kerry’s presidential campaign. The company is nonpartisan, with backers drawn from both parties.

It will be a “huge indicator of how politicians and pundits are trending in influence,” Michel said.

Fantasy Politics is run by a business by the same name. It will have a free league and a paid premium league. The company also plans to resell the data it aggregates to political campaigns.

People can register now. The game begins in the next couple of weeks.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 11:57 a.m. on March 9, 2012.